When pollsters undertook the inaugural Gallup-Purdue Index of more than 30,000 graduates to discover how they were faring after graduation, the results cast light on an often overlooked facet of higher education: the importance of mentorship and strong emotional support during college years.
Survey results found that what college a person went to mattered less for long-term success than how strong emotional support was during college years.
Six factors emerged as elements critical to long-term success in both career and life following graduation. Three factors are directly related to deep and experiential learning: having an internship or job that enabled direct application of skills learned in the classroom, involvement in extracurricular activities and organization, working on long-term projects.
The other three factors were related to support systems during college years: professors that excited students about learning, a feeling that professors cared about students as people, and mentors that encouraged students to thrive.
Study authors found the emotional support factors were more profoundly tied to long-term success. Graduates who strongly agreed with these three factors were twice as likely to be engaged in work and thriving in overall life post-graduation, study authors concluded.
Of the 30,000 graduates polled during the 2014 survey, Gallup found that six in 10 said they had a professor who made learning exciting (63%). Less than three in 10, however, felt their professors cared for them as people (27%). Only about two in 10 said they had a mentor that helped encourage them to reach goals and succeed (22%).
While Gallup’s survey revealed the importance of mentorship programs, pollsters also found when reviewing results with colleges and universities that many educational leaders were put off by the potential costs.
Brandon Busteed, Gallup Education’s executive director, however, offers a cost-effective solution. He suggests tapping the resources of alumni to help provide mentorship to current student populations.
Using his own alma mater, Duke University, as an example, he laid out a plan for providing mentors to all undergraduates. Duke, Busteed said, has 6,495 undergraduates and more than 140,000 alumni. If only 10% of the school’s alumni agreed to mentor, it would result in a two-to-one mentor, student ratio.
To unencumber the experience, mentors could meet via phone, Skype or Google Hangouts with their student charges, he suggests.
If higher education did tap into this resource to provide mentors for all undergraduates, “it could be one of the most important changes a college or university makes toward supporting the success of its future graduates,” Busteed said.
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